Jupiter – The Big Gas Giant.

Jupiter is next in line, being the 5th planet from the Sun. But before we arrive at Jupiter we have to travel through a big asteroid belt. Sigh.
Only one of these asteroids, Vesta, is ever visible to the naked eye, and it’s not got the largest diameter! That would belong to Ceres, which is as much as 900 kilometers (560 miles) wide.

You’re VERY unlikely to get hit by an asteroid if you were to travel through an asteroid belt though…

Well that’ll do, they can get pretty boring when all the excitement of Jupiter awaits.

JUPITER!

What a beast. He/She/It ‘s (Jupiter is named after the King of the Gods from Greek Mythology) 142 984 kilometers in diameter across the equator and 43128×1015 km3 in volume. (That’s 1321.3 Earths!) And if that’s not enough, he’s
2.5 times the mass of all the other planets in our solar system!

He’s got 63 moons! But only 4 of these are large enough to be commonly sighted.

Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium; it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements.